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RETIREMENT FROM THE NOISE AND HURRY OF THE WORLD?: THE EXPERIENCE OF ALMSHOUSE LIFE 1650-1850
Alannah Tomkins University of Keele
Paper presented at Voluntary Action History Society Seminar 22 April 2008
Not to be quoted without author’s permission
[Slide one]
• Almshouse living has enjoyed a broadly positive image with historians and the
public alike.
• The survival of attractive ranges of buildings, bearing tablets to commemorate
founders’ virtues, has ensured that the architectural features of almshouses
provided an early focus for study.i
• The residential experiences of occupants in the past have been less well
surveyed, mainly because obvious or concentrated sources of information
remain sparse. As a result almshouses have been treated as individual
institutions by local historians, but assessments of their collective impact are
notably few.ii
• The issue is complicated by terminology since the terms almshouse,
poorhouse, and hospital were used variously by contemporaries. Other
locally-derived terms include ‘guildhouse’, ‘callis’ and ‘gift houses’.iii Here,
‘almshouse’ is a generic label to refer to a house established by voluntary
charity (rather than from local taxes) with a fixed number of spaces; various
formats for foundation.iv
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[Slide 2]
• First person testimonies. A closer understanding of individual lived
experience is generally precluded by the virtual absence of first-person
accounts of life within an almshouse. Those very few that survive tend to
derive from oral history projects, perforce drawing on twentieth-century
accounts, or pertain to the wealthy, high-status almshouses where the prestige
of residents was in little doubt.
• Example: One that relates to the period before 1850 falls into this category.v
James Lacy was probably around 62 years old when he was admitted to St
Oswald’s Hospital in Worcester on 1809. He began his diary thirteen years
earlier, while still working as a linen draper in the city. Spread across
notebooks and loose sheets, Lacy appears to have kept a record of key events
in his life. Prior to his admission, the focus falls on his working life and his
involvement as a witness in two legal cases. After 1809 he concentrates on
matters concerning the almspeople, amongst whom he was appointed as the
vice-regent (possessing at least a notional supervisory role over the other
inhabitants).
Lacy embraced almshouse life with considerable enthusiasm. On admission he made
a careful note of the cash and other benefits he could expect, and a detailed account of
his outlay furnishing his room. It is likely that he had previously lived in furnished
lodgings, with insufficient possessions of his own. This implies, though, that either
his almshouse room was bare or that he deemed the existing contents to be inadequate
to his needs. It also indicates his own level of resources at the time of admission,
since he spent £5 19s 5d on items other than food. His shopping list is dominated by
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a bed and bedding, but also features a candlestick, fire irons and cleaning brushes.vi
Thereafter he documented such diverse aspects of life as the value of the pews
occupied by St Oswald’s inmates, a list of inmates who died or were removed by
relations, and the fabrics and tradesmen used to make the almspeople’s clothing.
Most startling of all he devised a scheme for an almshouse burial club, (although it
seems unlikely that the idea was ever adopted). Lacy was of course privileged in
occupying a position of some small authority in a well-funded almshouse, so his clear
relish for almshouse life cannot be taken as representative.
• Fiction. Alternative narrative representations can only be drawn from
literature, with patchy results. Most famously The Warden. The pathos
attached to Thomas Newcombe’s occupation of a place at the Hospital of the
Grey Friars, for instance, is plainly a literary device to emphasise the
character’s fall from grace. Little can be made of this in terms of inhabitants’
perspectives. By contrast Dickens’ account of Titbull’s almshouse carries
greater authenticity as a view of the internal politics of a house he visited, but
is nonetheless ‘the fiction of Dickens in his ‘Uncommercial’ guise’.vii
• Compilation. Therefore to find a more balanced picture it is necessary to cast
more widely, and draw on institutional records and the comments of
contemporary observers to judge the facilities on offer.
[Slide 3]
• Material lives. This chapter will first consider the material lives of almshouse-
dwellers in the period 1650-1850. This can be assessed via a comparison of
the charities’ capacity to house the poor, including their physical attributes of
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fabric and contents, along with the benefits they offered aside from
accommodation (most importantly a stipend).
• Emotional lives. It will go on to discuss the oversight of almshouse inmates or
controls on their behaviour. It will also consider the potential emotional
freight attached to an almshouse place. Did people draw satisfaction and
status from belonging to selected institutions? Given the paucity of first-
person testimonies to draw on here, I will assess the potential for autonomy
among inmates, and in particular will examine the scope of privacy for
almspeople.
• It will argue that experiences were varied along a continuum that stretched
from the comfortable to the impoverished. For every ancient pensioner
maintained comfortably there was at least one almsperson whose entitlements
and receipts were thin indeed. Evidence on the aggregate desirability of an
almshouse place is slight or oblique, but suggests that the value placed on
admission was higher than material receipts alone would imply.
[Slide 4]
Material experiences of almshouse life
• Internal and External space. Almshouses often stood at the heart of a village
or urban community; medieval foundations were often based around a central
courtyard, while those founded after a facilitating Act of 1597 typically
comprised a simple row of houses along a road close to the parish church.viii
Individual houses consisted of one or two rooms, on one or two storeys, with
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one or two hearths. This internal space was conceptualised by founders with
limited variations; the almshouses founded by the Duke of Albermarle in
Newcastle under Lyme provided a living room, bedroom and pantry to each
woman, whereas in Theydon Garnon in Essex, the Lady Fitzwilliam
almshouses had only one ground-floor room and an attic.ix It was not
uncommon to find communal spaces, too, especially in houses of ancient
foundation. These might include a kitchen, bakehouse, hall or washhouse, or a
chapel for all the almsfolk.x External space might be entirely communal, such
as the gallery ‘for walking exercise in bad weather’ in Tiverton, or it might
feature a separate garden for each inhabitant (permitting an early form of
allotment).xi
• Size, capacity, and occupancy. Almshouse living was defined partly by the
number of the intended inhabitants. They were rarely built for fewer than four
people, but were not designed for the masses. They might be substantial, with
wings for both female and male beneficiaries, but they were not usually
supposed to house more than around fifty people. xii Experiences of
almshouse living were also conditioned by the population regarded as eligible
for admittance. Almshouse foundations tried to define people who would
receive a place based on their age, gender, or personal attributes. Successful
applicants were identified by honesty, poverty, local residence, former
occupation or marital status. Of the twenty almshouses present in York by
1740, for example, nine preferred to admit widows (three of which aimed for a
closer specification, such as Catholic widows or the widows of freemen).xiii
This meant that new almspeople could expect to join a relatively elderly
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community, where the lowest ages were fifty or sixty, with experiences in
common. This did not inevitably make for harmonious living but it did at
least ensure familiarity of knowledge or pursuits. Of the thirteen almsmen in
Seckford’s almshouse in 1792 for example, nine had formerly followed just
four occupations.xiv
Access to almshouses supplies one criterion for judgement. It is necessary to know
exactly how many almsplaces were filled. Attempts to enumerate beneficiaries can be
unwitting underestimates when they rely on the number of dwellings rather than the
number of intended inmates. This misreading can arise either because the charity
allocated each unit to two people or because almshouses for men sometimes permitted
wives and children to accompany them; for example the St Cross hospital in
Winchester admitted male inmates but accommodated wives as well. The census for
1801 gives the occupancy of the hospital as 17 men and 6 women.xv
But the number of almshouses places can be talked down as well as up. Houses were
not always applied to their intended use. For example, when the only surviving
inmate of St Mary Magdalen’s hospital in Bath died in 1806, they had been the sole
beneficiary for at least three years.xvi In Worcester St Oswalds hospital technically
had 28 places yet in the 1820s at least 8 fell vacant when the Cathedral Dean failed to
fill them.xvii Almshouses might have become appropriated to other uses including
low rent or no rent accommodation for the parish poor, as was the case in many
Cambridgeshire parishes.xviii Barker-Read found that in Cranbrook in Kent,
almshouses were used to provide free accommodation to the master of the charity
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school and the parish clerk.xix In Glentworth Lincolnshire one hospital building was
apparently unclaimed so a local innkeeper installed two of his servants there.xx
As this last example implies, voluntary non-residence of a habitable house was a
problem for some almshouse charities, where beneficiaries chose not to make use of
the accommodation afforded them.xxi Absenteeism among cathedral bedesmen in the
17th century apparently ran quite high, particularly in foundations closest to London.
The men apparently preferred to live in the capital, and fully expected to receive the
charity’s associated pension there.xxii Some charities tried to monitor absentees, or at
least withheld the other benefits of the charity (making them contingent on the poor
person’s physical presence), but such conditions could be evaded by occasional
residence.
• Robust or flimsy. Nonetheless it is vital to know that almshouse places could
be occupied, that the house was built according to the founder’s intentions and
that the accommodation was habitable, because the fabric of the institutions
displayed some important divergences.xxiii Almshouses were often purpose
built but the materials and resilience of houses could vary considerably. Stone
or brick could be sturdy, as was the case with Browne’s Hospital in Stamford
Lincolnshire, built in the 1470s of local stone and praised by Pevsner as ‘one
of the best medieval hospitals in England’.xxiv It was still in use as an
almshouse in 2002. But even stout materials might not withstand the
depredations of time or hostility. Almhouses in Flint built around 1818 of
brick and thatch were condemned as hovels unfit for habitation in 1874.xxv
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Numerous almshouses (such as the Hospital of St John the Baptist in Chester
and Wynard’s almshouse in Exeter) were destroyed in the 1640s, although
both cited here were eventually rebuilt.xxvi In Sheffield, the men and women
in the Shewsbury hospital were physically imperilled by a combination of the
hospital building and its proximity to the river; four almspeople were drowned
in 1768 when the River Sheaf flooded and part of the building was washed
away.xxvii
Not all almshouses were well-built. In West Kent a shortage of local brick-making
meant that almshouses were timber framed and not very resistant to the elements.xxviii
Elsewhere seventeenth-century almshouses were often ‘of the local mud and stud
construction’ with a thatched roof.xxix Furthermore, there needed to be both the will
and the wherewithal to supply ongoing maintenance.xxx The inmates of the Hospital
of St John in Northampton were fortunate indeed, in that their stone-built quarters
(dating from the early fourteenth century) were repaired in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries and were inhabited by the almsmen until 1879.xxxi Most
beneficiaries of an ancient charity were not so fortunate, and even many newer
hospitals were in a state of physical decay. Without adequate funds for mending,
houses typically fell into disrepair and become uninhabitable.xxxii In 1781, a
reproachful letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine delineated the neglect of almshouses
in Twyford, Berkshire, allegedly owing to the death of all the Trustees; ‘some of the
windows are entirely broken, and the wall which incloses the garden is so decayed
that it will probably soon become useless’. The correspondent hoped for the
restoration of the poor ‘to the comfortable enjoyment of what was certainly designed
for their comfort as well as use’.xxxiii But human agency could do worse than to
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neglect an almshouse. In Manchester, a number of almshouses were demolished to
make way for the laying out of a new street in 1807. When the remainder were
similarly removed twelve months later (without the supply of replacement housing)
the inhabitants resisted in the only way they could by staging an effectual sit-in; they
‘remained in their dwellings; they kept possession at the hazard of their lives, amidst
showers of rubbish, descending stones, and falling timber; they retreated from room to
room as the work of destruction proceeded, dragging their beds’.xxxiv They were
eventually persuaded to decamp with the promise of a cellar dwelling, which seems
poor recompense for the loss of a house and small garden. Yet if houses became
uninhabitable or were even demolished, all hope was not necessarily lost. Some
communities valued their almshouses and could step into the breach. This is what
happened to Brickett’s Hospital in Salisbury, where the original sixteenth-century
buildings were clearly not fit for purpose by the late eighteenth century. The Hospital
was rebuilt by public subscription in 1780.xxxv
• Contents. It is usually assumed that the contents of houses either had to be
supplied by incoming alms-people from their own household, or were in some
way ‘inherited’ from previous inhabitants. Some houses required beneficiaries
to bring their goods into the almshouse for the charity to keep if they died as
an inmate, while others allowed inhabitants to will their possessions away.xxxvi
In either case the contents of almshouses were of necessity closely akin to the
contents of people’s own homes. Inventories of almspeople’s possessions are
rare, but references to thefts from almspeople suggest a potentially wide
variety of material experiences. The goods of almswoman Sarah Portress
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were stolen by her own nurse in 1753, but they included numerous items of
silver cutlery and two gold rings.xxxvii In contrast one almsman who was a
victim of burglary had a box at the foot of his bed, wherein the most valuable
items were a shirt and handkerchief.xxxviii A box seems to have been a
common possession, particularly for storage of clothing and other household
textiles, as was the case for poor families in their own homes.xxxix It is possible
that this absorption of goods into almshouse stock was resented, and that
consequently people were known to dispose of property before they took up
residence; in cases of theft, one defence was to allege that ‘stolen’ goods had
been purchased from someone about to enter an almshouse (a variation on the
old chestnut of purchasing items from a stranger).xl In Colchester, the quid
pro quo for leaving goods to the charity was that the poor kin of deceased
almsmen should have first refusal of the vacant place.xli If almshouses were
completely rebuilt, or if founders were sufficiently far-sighted, the charity
might stump up for furniture and bedlinen.xlii Communal possessions might
be numerous, as at Heytesbury where the kitchen and buttery were well-
supplied in the 17th and 18th centuries.xliii Nonetheless, the contents of each
almsroom could be quite meagre; rooms in Browne’s Hospital in Stamford
held only a bed, a shelf, a candlestick and extinguisher in 1731 (augmented
with a second shelf and a cupboard by 1766).xliv
• Cleanliness. Management of the internal space of almshouses seems to have
been left largely to inmates, so there is little or no evidence about the use of
space, or other attributes such as cleanliness (although presumably a noisome
house might have attracted the reproach of charity trustees, especially where
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cleaning was enshrined in the rules).xlv One canny set of rules required
almsmen’s wives to take it in turns to clean the almshouse every day.xlvi Yet
the internal arrangement of almshouses combined with their intended
occupancy made them very different environments to institutions for the poor
where people slept in dormitories (such as workhouses or infirmaries). This
meant that there was much less potential in almshouses for uncontrollable
disease. Workhouse fever or gaol fever (usually typhus) occasionally
decimated institutional populations, whereas there were apparently few reports
of an equivalent almshouse fever.xlvii
[Slide 5]
Aside from accommodation, what could almshouse inmates expect?
• Pension. It was usual for almshouses to supply a cash pension but the value of
pensions varied widely. Where pensions were sufficient to meet all normal
living costs (aside from inordinate expense associated with ill-health), the
result could be ‘an honourable period of retirement’.xlviii Yet almspeople were
entirely dependent on the scale of their charity’s income; if investment yields
rose then benefits might be extended but the charity operated with reference to
its own capacity rather than the changing shape of poverty. Milley’s hospital
in Lichfield was designed in the early sixteenth century to supply pensions of
just 5s or 6s per quarter to the almswomen, and this income remained
unchanged for over two hundred years, by which time it was totally
insufficient for the maintenance of an individual person. The value of the
endowment rose sharply in the early nineteenth century, and only then were
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the stipends raised significantly, to 5s per week in 1821.xlix Where almshouse
property was damaged and dividends fell, the results were typically passed
immediately to the almspeople. Foundations did not scruple to reduce
stipends (regardless of prevailing circumstances for the poor).l The Hospital
of St John the Baptist in Lichfield was the subject of a visitation in 1696,
arosing directly from an allegation that an almsman had died ‘in want of
necessaries for his body’ and that stipends were being paid in clipped money.li
Conversely, rising charity incomes were not necessarily passed on to poor
inmates, or at least not in a timely fashion; the almspeople at Woodbridge in
Suffolk felt that ‘their Conditions are become much worse than those who
receive the Alms of the Parish’ in 1718.lii The Woodbridge charity was well-
placed to mollify the almsmen, and by 1768 the annual stipend had risen to a
munificent £20, but high revenues could prove a temptation to weak-willed
charity managers. At the Hospital of St John the Baptist in Dunston
Lincolnshire the leases of hospital property became very valuable, but
successive Wardens (typically clergymen) pocketed the income while the
hospital fell into disrepair and disuse. The situation was only investigated and
rectified by Chancery in the mid-nineteenth century.liii The Shrewsbury
Hospital in Sheffield was very unusual in that it reduced the number of
almspeople after 1768 in order to raise stipends from 2s6d to 3s6d per week,
in response to the increasing cost of provisions. For once, a rigid endowment
income was not permitted to fossilise the value of the stipend.liv
This evidence would tend to suggest that almspeople habitually had to earn money or
approach their local overseer for poor relief, but almshouses had an unpredictable
13
relationship with both employment and parish authorities. Some founders required
inmates to remain independent of relief, although few went so far as Arthur Winsley
and required almsmen to give a bond with sureties for fifty pounds ‘not to take Alms
of the Town’.lv Some forbade work, while others insisted on it.lvi Numerous
foundations effectually compelled beneficiaries to either work or seek relief, given
their meagre stipend, so time and again parishes supplemented almshouse incomes.lvii
In some cases, vestries or overseers were given responsibility for managing
almshouses, and so the charities were elided with parish poorhouses and workhouses.
Parishes clearly saw the utility of free housing and so might try to ensure that charities
were kept up to maximum capacity.lviii Therefore the line between charities and
parishes might be rigidly observed, studiously ignored or entirely blurred.
• Clothing. Money was not the only benefit on offer, though. Clothing in the
form of coats or gowns was an integral part of some benefactions. These were
designed as a visual reminder of the founder’s philanthropy, usually fashioned
from sober shades into a long, open gown, often sporting a badge, or buttons
bearing the founder’s arms.lix The widows and spinsters of Ash’s almshouse
in Leek in Staffordshire were perhaps more colourful than most, receiving a
gown of violet cloth every two years.lx If the supply of clothing proved at all
troublesome, however, particularly in the nineteenth century, it was quietly
forgotten or converted into a raised pension payment.lxi Charity garments
possessed a variety of possible meanings for almspeople. They might simply
represent a warm item of clothing that could be turned to account (as apparel
or as an asset at the pawnshop), but they quite possibly aroused strong
feelings, either as a symbol of belonging to a high-status establishment or as a
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shameful badge of dependence.lxii It has been assumed that the former
sentiment was most prominent among almspeople, a view probably
consolidated by Trollope’s depiction of Hiram’s Hospital in The Warden and
its alleged life model, St Cross in Winchester; it is ironic that a ‘gowned
Trollopian worthy’lxiii should have come to represent satisfaction and stability,
when both the fictional and real-life hospitals were central to scandals about
benefits not paid to inmates. Caffrey suggests a time-scale for changing
sentiments towards charity clothing, by emphasising negative reactions to it by
the twentieth century.lxiv
• Fuel; medical aid. Wealthy foundations might also supply extras like fuel.lxv
Robert Veel’s almshouse in Ilchester supplied medical aid and funeral costs in
the eighteenth century, including in 1772 3s for brandy for bathing an
almsman’s legs. lxvi Dr White’s Hospital in Bristol supplied a shilling a week
to pay a nurse for the almspeople in sickness, whereas Thomas Seckford’s
charity employed three poor women to nurse his thirteen poor men.lxvii Yet
even in well-funded charities money might be misapplied or simply not spent.
The Master of St John’s Hospital in Bath was discovered in 1734 to have
reduced the quality of gowns, failed to employ a nurse, and neglected to
supply heating or make repairs.lxviii Poorly-funded houses that were not
supposed to supply nursing had to face up to the fact that their charity was not
capable of acting as a place of residential care for the physically unsound,
particularly if fellow residents were not prepared to support their frail
neighbours.lxix In Nottingham one woman was removed from her almsplace
when she became unable to care for herself and likewise unable to afford a
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servant.lxx Nursing was necessarily limited even where it was supplied. At
Bond’s hospital in Coventry, the nurse could not care for Thomas Marriot in
1872 because he was allegedly of unsound mind and required night-time
supervision; he was removed to his daughter’s house and ultimately to the
workhouse.lxxi
• Additional charity. A lifeline was thrown to selected almshouse inmates by
the foundation of supplementary charities. This seems to confirm Jordan’s
‘social osmosis’ theory, whereby one charity would encourage the foundation
of others; almshouse pensions and other benefits might rise from the gradual
accretion of endowments.lxxii Extra charity could range from the munificent
and formal to the token and casual. At the generous end of the scale, George
Monoux’s almshouse for 13 men and women in Walthamstow attracted four
additional endowments between 1817 and 1842, yielding dividends on over
£1585 of investment.lxxiii At the other end of the spectrum, in the first half of
the eighteenth century, the Cordwainer’s Company in Chester gave 1s6d to
almspeople on every 11 November.lxxiv Complicated payment regimes could
result where almspeople of the same charity were eligible for minor variations
in allowances.lxxv Yet supplementary charity could also be withdrawn. In
Burton on Trent during the 1770s there was clearly a desire to spread charity
funds as widely as possible, so 10s of Mrs Almond’s charity that had been
given to the women in Paulett’s almshouse was withdrawn. lxxvi
In this way, the material value of an almshouse place could fluctuate very widely
around an ideal template. Failures by almshouse charities to support the poor, or even
16
treat them in line with the wishes of the founder, should not come as any surprise.
‘While the system of charity and lower-class survival were deeply implicated, there
was no direct or coterminous match; both had additional and different
imperatives’.lxxvii Therefore the comfortable and positive image of material aspects of
almshouse life needs to be revised.
[Slide 6]
Autonomy and Privacy
The practical aspects of life in an almshouse need to be contrasted with the potential
emotional impact of admission. What was the value of a place over and above its
cash equivalent? This can be assessed by examining the technical versus the practical
imposition of controls, or the freedoms granted to or wrested by the inmates, the
potential for privacy, and the enthusiasm evinced by almspeople for their lot.
• Behavioural rules. Arguably, the autonomy of residents was always regarded
as one of the inherent problems of this type of charity. What might the poor
get up to, once provided with a permanent appointment to an almshouse?
Founders might try to govern their almspeople by imposing behavioural
clauses, specifying categories of activity that were essential or that would not
be tolerated. Requirements often related to religious observance, such as the
stipulation that almspeople at Dyvynog should attend Church on Sundays and
be present during all prayers and sermons from the beginning to the end.lxxviii
Inhabitants were commonly enjoined to live peaceably together. Where
almshouses were built alongside schools, the almspeople might be charged
17
with a teaching role; in one unusual case the rules included an injunction to
empty and repair the privy.lxxix Proscribed activities typically included
swearing, gambling, overspending, petty crime, inebriation, and promiscuity.
For instance, the Countess of Pembroke tried to ensure that her almswomen at
Appleby were not spendthrift, by requiring ‘That none of the sisters do runne
on the Score in the Towne’.lxxx
• Official oversight. In practice, the control of almshouse inhabitants was
typically fairly light; the provisions of the charity might include the
employment of a resident master, nurse or chaplain to minister to the poor, but
rarely gave anyone a disciplinary role. Similarly there might be a notional
curfew, but this was only enforceable where the almshouse was built round a
courtyard with a locking gate.lxxxi Specific indulgences could be extended to
almspeople; men might be allowed to continue their trade, such as at the
Trinity Hospital in Salisbury.lxxxii In Bristol, seamen in the Merchant’s
Hospital were even allowed to conduct trips abroad.lxxxiii Therefore the
problem lay in effective policing of almspeople’s behaviour, which was
fraught with difficulty. Stipends could be reduced or withheld, or fines levied,
but this might only exacerbate the problem.lxxxiv Expulsion from the
almshouse, the ultimate sanction, was rarely exercised, or only after a second,
third or fourth offence (and expulsion orders could even be rescinded).lxxxv
Sexual misdemeanours such as adultery, incest, or giving houseroom to
women of ill fame were some of the most certain ways to court expulsion.lxxxvi
The only institution found to diverge dramatically from this pattern was
Charterhouse in London, where the behaviour of pensioners and staff alike
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were subject to considerable scrutiny (and a higher than usual rate of
expulsion).lxxxvii
• Privacy versus communality. Almshouses offered a measure of domestic
privacy to a group of the poor unaccustomed to experiencing it, and combined
with the usually permanent nature of the appointment residence might well
constitute ‘comfort and security well beyond previous or peer
expectation’.lxxxviii An almshouse place intended for single occupancy
constituted an enclosed space for one person. If that person did not choose to
share it, they could achieve domestic separation from all other people,
including surviving children and parents. [NB Mary Barker Read found a
grandfather, father and son living in neighbouring almshouses in Maidstone in
Kent 1710-1720] Where houses were intended for married couples or for
unrelated pairs of spinsters, widows or elderly men, a two-roomed dwelling
would still have offered the possibility of a room and a bed each. This amount
of space dedicated to one person would have stood in sharp contrast to most
poor people’s domestic experiences, which constituted a series of shared
spaces. In labourers’ cottages, tenements, garrets and cellars, the poor shared
rooms with family members. In Ardleigh in 1796, for example, no paupers
lived alone.lxxxix Within those rooms it was quite common for different
generations and different sexes to hold multiple occupancy of the family’s
beds.xc The ‘moral resources’ offered by accommodation that contained
sufficient bedrooms to separate the generations were felt acutely by
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philanthropists and observers towards the end of the eighteenth century,
although it does not follow that the poor adopted the same sentiments.xci
Among the prosperous there was a continuous thread of commentary that praised the
efforts of the poor to remain privately independent in their own home, and cited this
as one of the comforts of poverty. Families were properly accommodated within
separate houses because married couples had a moral right to expect them, and a
failure to achieve this constituted an aberration.xcii In 1800, Thomas Bernard
(admittedly an energetic and sympathetic philanthropist) protested ‘The poor man,
poor as he is, loves to cherish the idea of PROPERTY. To talk of my house, my
garden, my furniture, is always a theme of delight and pleasure.’xciii
But socially superior observers maintained a contradictory set of discourses about the
poor, and idealised images of domestic enclosure stood in dramatic contrast to, for
example, perceptions of the mid-nineteenth century urban poor. When they resorted
to the indoors, for sleeping if nothing else, their choices exposed them to deep
censure. The overflowing cellars, attics or back-to-backs of some cities, the lodging
houses or overcrowded apartments in insanitary courts, were physical indictments of
the domestic failings of the poor.xciv The ‘public’ lives of the poor, epitomised in the
eighteenth century by the riotous mob and in the nineteenth century by Mayhew’s
people of the London streets, were seen as similarly blameworthy. Ironically the
latter were badged as ‘neither knowing nor caring for the enjoyments of home’, even
where they did maintain fierce family ties.xcv This is what Patricia Meyer Spacks
meant when, considering the relation of public and private to ‘privacy’ she judged ‘If
20
significant public functioning, except as a problem for others, seldom belongs to the
bottom classes, their lives, though ‘private’, rarely enable physical privacy.’xcvi
How should we determine the value that the poor placed on the physical
independence and privacy (ultimately as individual isolation) supplied in almshouses?
This must partly be read from the antipathy of the poor towards participating in
communal or supervised living. This took place within any residence where there was
an element of choice or self-selection for inmates, albeit notional in some cases: a
workhouse, a shared lodging house, an infirmary, or a model-housing scheme would
all qualify here, whereas a gaol would not (except where families chose to dwell there
with prisoners). Evidence before the nineteenth century is piecemeal; in East
Claydon in Buckinghamshire, four families sharing a house in 1677 operated open
fires and shunned the one chimney in the building ‘because every one will be
private’.xcvii In the nineteenth century, it is axiomatic that some aspects of family
privacy as independence were prized very highly. Resistance to workhouses had a
long history but was at its height in the middle third of the nineteenth century. When
the post-1834 workhouse threatened to make all poor relief contingent on institutional
dwelling, there was an outcry that extended beyond the poor. But workhouse life did
not act in opposition to privacy, so much as domestic autonomy. The family was
designedly broken up on admission to a workhouse, in contrast to family togetherness
but lack of privacy in the independent household.
Resistance is particularly revealing in the context of model housing, advocated by
philanthropists and urban improvers in the late nineteenth century, which was in many
ways the updated version of the almshouse. xcviii Model housing of course was not
21
free, but subject to both a rent charge and tougher moral policing, both of which were
likely to render them less palatable than almshouses. Arguably, the final two thirds of
the nineteenth century was the period when the poor were most likely to refuse
improvement or reform and prefer squalor to surveillance by economic superiors (and
by implication, were more amenable to these forces before 1834).xcix
• Sharing spaces. So family privacy was probably highly prized. Individual
privacy, though, is a more complex issue. It is clear that almspeople permitted
friends and family to share their room and their bed, with or without the
sanction of the charity. This might constitute assistance offered to someone
else who lacked accommodation, such as where Frances Jeggot allowed Mary
Smith ‘to lie along with me’ because Smith’s husband had threatened to kill
her. Alternatively it arose from domestic help being offered to feeble
almspeople; Rachel Woodthorpe shared the almshouse and bed of her uncle
Joshua Crickett, who was bedridden and could not cut up his food.c Vertical
kin were probably the most common additional lodgers in almshouse
accommodation. ci These shreds of evidence are slight but they open the
prospect of poor people who, in the eighteenth century at least, sought out the
physical intimacy of shared accommodation in preference to the isolation of
lone occupancy. Caffrey’s work on Yorkshire, though, turns up sufficient
proof that close communal living also aroused tensions and conflicts between
inmates (which was always inherently likely but difficult to prove).
Furthermore she contends that the use of communal areas in almshouses
declined, implying that individual privacy became more highly prized by the
end of the period.cii
22
[Slide 7]
So to what extent was an almshouse place desirable?
• Competition for places. It is unlikely that anyone was forced to enter an
almshouse or compelled to remain there. Therefore the fact that the poor
petitioned hard to gain entry to some establishments, and that almshouse
places were filled, was itself a testament to the fact that the charity was
desirable at some level. The almswomen living at Jackenetts almshouse in
Cambridge were chosen by rate-payers, and in the early nineteenth century the
elections gave rise to some closely-fought battles; however, this might speak
more reliably to the energies and interests of ratepayers than to the enthusiasm
of the women.ciii More telling perhaps was the presence in a number of
almshouses of waiting lists for admission. Since the number of places was
fixed, would-be entrants were forced to await the death of an almsperson to
secure admission, and that could entail a lengthy wait. At Christ Church in
Oxford, waiting times of three years were quite usual, and some frail
applicants died before they reached the top of the list.civ Similarly, wilful
resignations from charities owing to unexpected good fortune were rare,
although in the late 19th century some charity benefits had become so
overtaken by inflation that beneficiaries found it expedient to exchange their
almshouse charity for a more munificent one.cv
• Connections with social superiors. Beyond material receipts, though, there lay
the benefits of association with a particular charity. ‘If charity is regarded as a
form of circulation rather than a material thing, it tied all these groups into
23
various relationships of application .. and it created uneven relationships of
acquiescence and power’.cvi In the context of almshouses, this meant the
connections between the almspeople, the founder or founding body, the
trustees, and with the local community. In the case of Cathedral bedesmen
this involved a tenuous connection with royalty, since bedesmen’s applications
had to be given royal assent.cvii Charity managers or electors could
encompass powerful contemporaries including landowners, clergy, town
aldermen and professionals.
• Perquisites. The high-profile presence of almspeople within a parish or town
could act as confirmation of belonging (especially where admission related to
local residence), and special treatment could give rise to perquisites. Men
elected to St Bartholomew’s almshouse in Oxford were poorly remunerated
for their trouble (since none lived in the almshouse, and the stipend of 9d per
week was chronically low) but it is possible that admission was as much a
matter of prestige as of material advancement. Public elections to the charity
ensured that almsmen remained a distinct group among the otherwise
undifferentiated urban poor (particularly for their electors, the town council)
and the men received attention and attractive extras; for example payments to
them were listed among the canvassing expenses of parliamentary candidates
for Oxfordshire during the elections of 1780 and 1784.cviii These cannot have
mitigated the small pension, but were possibly welcome acknowledgments of
official standing.
24
• Marks of status. Cathedral bedesmen took part in ceremonial events and
processions and yielded benefits of association, since they participated
alongside senior clergymen and occasionally aristocratic families, and enjoyed
an allocated pew in the Cathedral. Some events were routine, such as the
arrival of assize court judges, but other one-off celebrations included royal
visits, or the 1707 union with Scotland.cix Ford’s and Bond’s Hospitals in
Coventry were patently integral to Coventry’s sense of identity, and were an
acknowledged source of pride. In 1844 the King of Saxony was shown Ford’s
hospital when on a visit to the city, while from 1784 inhabitants of Bond’s
hospital were treated to an annual visit by the Corporation and 1856-63 given
ceremonial dinners for national events. The latter allegedly gave delight and
gratification to residents.cx
[Slide 8]
Conclusion
• Varied material life. ‘Neat houses and neat old people, sometimes in uniform,
came to form an attractive feature in many towns and villages’.cxi The
propriety of this image has meant that it has dominated thinking about
almshouses to date. The experience of almshouse life in the past, however,
was much less consistent. The size, location, layout and fabric of houses all
contributed to the nature of the space they provided. These factors determined
by founders and trustees were varied further by policies concerning
admissions and behaviours. The resulting material circumstances of
almshouses can be partially reconstructed to indicate the comfortable or
25
pinched experiences of residents, and these have supplied the majority of the
details in this chapter. Almshouse life could comprise genuinely secure
retirement, with accommodation, income and extraordinary expenses all
provided, within a private but not isolated setting, but this was not the standard
provision. Material life was usually much less cushioned than this, with either
the house or its pension being inadequate, compelling residents to maintain
their acquaintance with work, begging, relief, or other forms of income. When
people’s circumstances became acute, either through an unstable building, a
starvation-level pension or through their own decay, no amount of respectable
imagery could redeem almshouses for the unmitigated misery or physical
exposure imposed on inhabitants.
• Intangible benefits (and demerits). The essential character of almshouse life
though, that varied from institution to institution, lay in the traditions and
relationships established among inmates, or between inmates and outsiders.
Was it common for residents’ status to be gauged internally not by age but by
length of institutional residence, or for there to be bitter dissention about the
use of outside spaces?cxii What were the constraints on sharing almsrooms
with relations, a practice rarely governed by statute but nonetheless critical to
the retention of almsplaces by an aging population? The evidence for tackling
these sorts of questions is extremely dispersed, both geographically and
chronologically, but suggests subtle differences between institutions that were
notionally akin. This makes long-term shifts difficult to determine, beyond
Caffrey’s argument that use of communal facilities declined over time.
26
• Persistence of positive image. One plausible conclusion is that election to an
almshouse could confer a measure of status substantially out of proportion to
its material benefits. Indications of esteem are most clear where almspeople
became embedded in community activity such as the election to charity itself,
ecclesiastical celebrations or parliamentary elections. Such occasions might
carry material perquisites but these were probably secondary in importance to
the marks of inclusion and respect that they carried. Arguably the emotional
weight accorded to intangible benefits has substantially contributed to the
intellectual coherence of the neat, respectable almshouse image that has been
dominant for so long. Charities that remain operative tend to reinforce this
perception; recently the Mary Feilding Guild residential home in north London
was described as ‘harder to get into than an Oxbridge college’, emphasising
both its exclusivity and its desirability.cxiii
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Endnotes i W. H. Godfrey, The English Alms-House (London: Faber and Faber, 1955); P. Judson, ‘A Legacy of Almshouse Building’, in L. Crust, Lincolnshire Almshouses. Nine centuries of charitable housing (Sleaford: Heritage Lincolnshire, 2002) pp. 70-1. ii For a recent exception see H. Caffrey, Almshouses in the West Riding of Yorkshire (Kings Lynn: Heritage, 2006). iii E.M. Hampson, The Treatment of Poverty in Cambridgeshire 1597-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1934), p. 69; P. Morant, The History and Antiquities of…Colchester (London: W. Bowyer, 1748), p. 9; Crust p. 5; An Account of the Hospitals, Alms-Houses and Public Schools in Bristol (Bristol: T. Mills, 1775) p. 14. iv W.K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England 1480-1660 (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1959) p. 260. v I am indebted to Eileen McGrath for the information in this paragraph and the next; see E. McGrath, ‘The Bedesmen of Worcester Cathedral: post-Reformation cathedral charity compared with St Oswald’s Hospital almspeople, c. 1660-1900’ (PhD thesis, Keele University, forthcoming). A later diary survives for an inmate of St Cross between 1873-96, cited in P. Hopewell St Cross: England’s Oldest Almshouse (Chichester: Phillimore, 1995), pp.128-32. vi This shopping list is reminiscent of the goods that incomers to Bond’s hospital in Coventry were required to supply upon admission; [J. Cleary and M. Orton] So Long as the World Shall Endure. The Five Hundred Year History of Ford’s and Bond’s Hospitals (Coventry: Coventry Church Charities, 1991), pp. 48, 125. vii W.M. Thackeray, The Newcomes. Memoirs of a most respectable family (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1855), chapter 75; C. Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller (London: Chapman and Hall, 1866) chapter 29; P. Ackroyd, Dickens (London: Minerva, 1991), p. 56. viii E. Prescott, The English Medieval Hospital 1050-1640 (London: Seaby, 1992); Caffrey, Almshouses, p. 27. ix W. R. Powell (ed.), Victoria County History of Essex 4, (London: Oxford University Press, 1956) pp. 274-5. x M. Barker-Read, ‘The Treatment of the Aged Poor in Five Selected West Kent Parishes from Settlement to Speenhamland 1662-1775’ (PhD thesis, Open University, 1988), p. 87; E. A. Heelis, ‘St Anne’s Hospital at Appleby’, Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society ix new series (1909), p. 193; Crust p. 25. xi M. Dunsford, Historical Memoirs of the Town and Parish of Tiverton (Exeter: J. Brice, 1790), p. 335; Barker–Read, p.265; R. Loder, The Statutes and Ordinances for the Government of the Alms-Houses in Woodbridge (Woodbridge: R. Loder, 1792), rules of 1587 (unpaginated). xii Caffrey, Almshouses, p. 31. xiii P.M. Tillott (ed), The Victoria History of Yorkshire: The City of York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), pp.421-6. xiv Loder, (unpaginated). xv Abstract of the Answers and Returns made pursuant to ‘An act for taking an account of the population of Great Britain 1801’ (London: 1802), Enumeration part 1: England and Wales, p. 326. xvi J. Manco, The Spirit of Care. The eight-hundred year story of St John’s Hospital, Bath (Bath: St John’s Hospital, 1998), p. 125. xvii McGrath. xviii Hampson , pp. 69, 77. xix Barker-Read, p. 289. xx Crust, p. 18. xxi Caffrey, West Riding p. 27. xxii I. Atherton, E. McGrath and A. Tomkins, ‘ “Pressed down by want and afflicted with poverty, wounded and mained in war or work down with age?” Cathedral almsmen in England 1538-1914’, in A. Borsay and P. Shapely (eds), Medicine, Charity and Mutual Aid. The consumption of health and welfare in Britain, c.1550-1950 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), p. 30. xxiii Some remained unbuilt; N. Yates and P. A. Welsby (eds) Faith and Fabric: a history of Rochester cathedral, 604-1994 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996), p. 107. xxiv Crust, p. 10. xxv Flintshire Record Office, G/B/57(c)/6, Holywell Union correspondence regarding the sale of the Flint almshouses, 1874-6 xxvi B. E. Harris (ed.), Victoria County History of Chester 3, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) p. 182; Remarkable Antiquities of the City of Exeter (London: 1723), p. 210.
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xxvii J. Roach, The Shrewsbury Hospital, Sheffield 1616-1975 (Borthwick paper 104, 2003), p. 6. xxviii Barker-Read, pp. 83-4. xxix Crust, p. 25. xxx C.M. Carlton, History of the Charities in the City of Durham (Durham: George Walker, 1872), p. 33. xxxi W. Page (ed.), Victoria County History of Northamptonshire 3, (London: 1930) p. 59. xxxii Barker-Read, p. 297. xxxiii Gentleman’s Magazine 51 (1781), 454-5. xxxiv Manchester Observer 5 September 1818, quoted in G. B. Hindle, Provision for the Relief of the Poor in Manchester, 1754-1826 (Chetham Society Manchester 22, 1975), p. 144. xxxv Caring, p. 13. xxxvi Orders Relating to the Almshouse &c of Dyvynog, (London: J. Stephens,1731), p. 4; M. W. Greenslade (ed.), Victoria County History of Staffordshire 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970) p. 281; Lichfield Record Office, Salop Peculiar Probate Records, will of Mary Blakemore (1818). xxxvii Old Bailey Proceedings Online (hereafter OBP) (www.oldbaileyonline.org, 21 July 2005), October 1753, trial of Isabella Lynch (t17531024-26). xxxviii OBP (13 February 2007), December 1785, John Bateman (t17851214-9). xxxix OBP (13 February 2007), November 1809, Esther Simpson (t18091101-33). xl OBP (13 February 2007), June 1769, John Chaney (t17690628-43) and February 1747, Vincent Symonds (t17470225-3); L. MacKay, 'Why they stole: women in the Old Bailey, 1779-1789', Journal of Social History 32: 3 (1999), p. 628. xli Morant, p. 7 xlii J. Stevens Cox, The Almshouse and St Margaret’s Leper Hospital Ilchester (Ilchester Historical Monographs 5, 1949), p. 110. xliii Wiltshire and Swindon Record Office, 251/47, Heytesbury Hospital inventories of the almshouse 1656 and 1798. xliv Judson in Crust, p. 68. xlv Heelis, p. 197; Crust, p. 26; H. Caffrey, ‘The Almshouse experience in the nineteenth-century West Riding’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 76 (2004), p. 242. xlvi J. Stevens Cox, p. 123. xlvii For a solitary example see E. Hird, The Lady Margaret Hungerford Almshouse and Free School, Corsham, Wiltshire 1668-1968 (Corsham: E. Hird,1997), p. 80. xlviii J. Broad, ‘Housing the rural poor in southern England, 1650-1850’, Agricultural History Review 48:2 (2000), p. 155. xlix VCH Staffs 3 pp. 276-7. l J. Stevens Cox, p. 110; Dunsford, p. 336. li VCH Staffs 3 p. .284. lii Loder (unpaginated). liii Crust, p. 17. liv Roach, p. 7. lv Morant, p. 8. lvi Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 241; Crust, pp. 34, 37, 48; J. A. A. Goodall, God’s House at Ewelme. Life, devotion and architecture in a fifteenth-century almshouse (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), p. 112; Atherton, McGrath and Tomkins, pp. 26-7. lvii Tomkins, p. 96; Crust, p. 28; Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 235-6; Account…Bristol throughout. lviii H. Peet (ed.), Liverpool Vestry Books 1681-1834 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1912), I, p. 173 . lix P. Cunnington and C. Lucus, Charity Costumes of children, scholars, almsfolk, pensioners (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1978), p. 227 passim; Hird, p. 48; Crust, p. 27. lx M. W. Greenslade (ed.), Victoria County History of Staffordshire 7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 166. lxi Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 242. lxii Tomkins, pp. 224-5. lxiii P. Slack, From Reformation to Improvement. Public welfare in early modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), p. 25. lxiv Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 242. lxv So Long as the World Shall Endure, p. 127. lxvi Stevens Cox, p. 121.
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lxvii Account…Bristol, p. 40; Loder, rule 30 (unpaginated). lxviii Manco, pp. 110, 114. lxix Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, pp. 236, 240-241. lxx Smith, p. 220. lxxi So Long as the World Shall Endure, p. 129. lxxii Jordan, pp. 154, 216, 261. lxxiii M. C. Martin, ‘Women and Philanthropy in Walthamstow and Leyton 1740-1870’, London Journal 19:2 (1995), p.136. lxxiv Chester City Archives, G8/6 Accounts of the Cordwainers’ Company; for example see 11 November 1721, 11 November 1754. lxxv Account…Bristol, p. 15. lxxvi Lichfield Record Office, BD13/16, BD13/17. lxxvii S. Lloyd ‘ “Agents in their own concerns”? Charity and the economy of makeshifts in eighteenth-century Britain’, in S. King and A. Tomkins (eds), The Poor in England 1700-1850. An economy of makeshifts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), p. 118. lxxviii Relating…Dyvynog, p. 4. lxxix Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 224; Hird, p. 47; Crust, p. 25. lxxx Heelis, p. 197. lxxxi Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 242. lxxxii Caring, p. 8. lxxxiii Account…Bristol, p. 16. lxxxiv Hird, p. 49. lxxxv J. Stevens Cox, pp. 106, 123; Heelis, p. 197; Loder (unpaginated, footnote under rule 6); Caffrey, Almshouses, pp. 59-62; So Long as the World Shall Endure, pp. 49-50. lxxxvi Hird, p. 81; Crust, p. 26; Loder, rule 22 (unpaginated). lxxxvii S. Porter, ‘Order and disorder in the early modern almshouse: the Charterhouse example’, London Journal 23:1 (1998). lxxxviii Caffrey, ‘Almshouse experience’, p. 224. lxxxix T. Sokoll, ‘The pauper household small and simple’, Ethnologia Europaea 17:1 (1987). xc M. McKeon, The Secret History of Domesticity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005), p.260; Tomkins p. 67. xci S. Lloyd, ‘Cottage Conversations: poverty and manly independence in eighteenth-century England’, Past and Present 184 (2004), pp. 69, 71. xcii Broad, p. 158; K. Chase and M. Levenson, The Spectacle of Intimacy. A Public Life for the Victorian Family (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 147. xciii Information for Cottagers Collected from the Reports of the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor (London: W. Bulmer & Co., 1800), p. 10. xciv Chase and Levenson, pp. 143, 147. xcv Mayhew on costermongers, quoted in Chase and Levenson, pp. 146-7. xcvi P. M. Spacks, Privacy. Concealing the Eighteenth-Century Self (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2003), p. 1. xcvii Broad, p. 158. xcviii S. Morris, ‘Market solutions for social problems: working-class housing in nineteenth-century London’, Economic History Review 54:3 (2001). xcix Chase and Levenson, p. 149. c OBP (21 July 2005), June 1767, Mary Smith (t17670603-22); (13 February 2007), February 1811, Rachel Woodthorpe (t18110220-28). ci See for example Peet, p. 394. cii Caffrey, Almshouses, pp. 27, 38, 61. ciii J. P. C. Roach (ed.), Victoria County History of Cambridge and Ely 3, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1959) p. 147. civ J. Curthoys, ‘ “To Perfect the College…” – the Christ Church almsmen 1546-1888’, Oxoniensia 60 (1995), p. 381; Tomkins, pp. 94-5. cv McGrath. cvi Lloyd, ‘Agents’, p. 117. cvii Atherton, McGrath and Tomkins, p. 22. cviii Bodleian Library Ms Top Oxon c.280, fol. 60, 116. cix McGrath. cx So Long as the World Shall Endure, pp. 56, 130-1.
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cxi Crust, p. 27; Caffrey, Almshouses, p. 28. cxii Dickens, Uncommercial Traveller, chapter 29. cxiii The Guardian 27 January 2007, ‘Family’ p. 4.
